Recommend checking out the video if you are into bjïrd watching…
[Video]
[4.43]
Julian Axelrod: I don’t think “Berghain” is directly inspired by Tinashe, but “Rosalía, Björk and Yves Tumor scream-singing about salvation and psychosexual tension over apocalyptic church choirs and Psycho strings from the London Symphony Orchestra” is peak “match my freak.” The craziest thing about this song is that it’s the lead single; the second craziest thing is that it works.
[7]
Jel Bugle: I think I will probably be going against the grain here, but this was not an enjoyable song. Didn’t like the string section, didn’t like Björk, really did not like what Yves Tumor was saying at the end. Rosalía sang quite nicely. If they’d written a tune and not bothered with Yves, then it could have been much better.
[3]
Al Varela: Finding it really hard not to roll my eyes listening to this. The orchestra, while admittedly cool-sounding, feels more like a gimmick than a creative decision. Especially with how it jumps right in instead of building it up or at least hiding its hand before it catches you off-guard. The actual song itself is just not sticky either. At her best, Rosalía used her eccentric production to make some deliriously catchy music. I don’t buy this “bigger than life artiste” impression that this song gives me, especially when it boasts Björk and Yves Tumor features that are completely wasted. At this point, I have little patience for music that would rather be A Statement than a real song. Self-important wank.
[3]
Ian Mathers: Like it was designed in a lab to perplex me. Music video “produced by CANADA”; well good on us, then! Doesn’t feel like a single so much as a chunk cut out of a longer work.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: Wild to be a citizen of the world and have the black person quote a Mike Tyson rape threat. A real choice there.
[4]
Dave Moore: A whole mess of art signifiers in search of the art, but the real dealbreaker is plainer than that — the voices are swamped by the theatrics. “Put a Björk on it” is usually pretty foolproof (just ask Shygirl), but here it sounds like just another element selected at random.
[4]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The appeal of Rosalía, as it stood from 2017 to 2022, was her exquisite fusion of forms — flamenco, urbano, and contemporary synth-pop styles, all comingling in nonsensical but undeniably compelling ways. Over the course of that golden half decade, her omnivory only grew; the fractions of each mode on MOTOMAMI were almost indiscernible, combined with a certain alchemical mastery. Here, in her return, she’s fucked up the ratios. Perhaps I will be proven wrong in literally 24 hours when this album drops, but as a single “Berghain” is tedious, a shock-and-awe approach to “experimental” pop that plays to none of her strengths and all of the most ridiculous aspects of her persona. It is perhaps an impressive work of composition, but I’d rather not hear it again.
[3]
Coming into this, all I could think was, “Who asks for a Björk feature?” The better question is why, since she’s barely present and heavily overshadowed. Having never heard Rosalía before, I was very much taken by the poperaticity on display, but as the song goes on, I liked fewer and fewer of the other touches brought in, until finally it ends on that quote, repeated over and over, and just… Who thought that was a good idea?? [5]